What is the best alternative to Swan?

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score 34 · Answer 1

KDE

Top Pro

Highly customisable

There are many customization options and possibilities to tweak the desktop, including widgets. See More

Top Con

Perceived clunkyness and slowness

Compared to other options, KDE is still perceived slow. Especially, the desktop takes a few seconds to login. Mouse pointer can feel sluggish, or laggy, on older systems See More

Top Pro

Open source

Top Con

HiDPI support is spotty

The log in screen as well as some other components of the OS do not scale properly under HIDPI. Everything in the log in screen will be displayed too small, as well as some areas of the OS. See More

Top Pro

Looks beautiful

The design of the three built-in desktop themes; Air, Breeze, and Oxygen, are very beautiful to some. See More

Top Con

KDE is awesome but it is overcomplicated for newbies for sure

Way too many options for newbies to digest before the learning curve is over. See More

Top Pro

Has a file manager that provides a good balance between power and simplicity

Included file manager provides several icon, list and detail views to choose from along with features such as tabs, bookmarks, tagging, previews and metadata, network file access, bluetooth file transfers to/from devices and excellent removable storage integration while remaining fast and easy to use. See More

Top Con

Stability problems

Under certain conditions, most of KDE's components can be highly sensitive to race conditions, which leads to KDE applications frequently crashing, and, on rare occasion, kdeinit itself locking up. See More

Top Pro

KDE is an evolution on the classic desktop model

KDE 4 is a great evolution on the classic Win95/Gnome/XFCE approach. It's moving in innovative directions while respecting the classic metaphors. See More

Top Con

Poorly named app menu with too many apps starting with "K"

This is better in KDE Neon with minimalist apps, which indeed in itself points out the problem. See More

Top Pro

The session manager works perfectly

This is a much better session manager compared to solutions from other Linux desktop environments. See More

Top Con

Interfaces are inconsistent and ugly in 4.x

While parts of KDE in 4.x can be very good looking, a common opinion is that the style is too hobbled together with inconsistent icons and styles clashing with each other. See More

Top Pro

Bunch of coherent applications

What make plasma so nice is the galaxy of apps, sharing same look and feel, configuration and behaviour. See More

Top Pro

The search with the Windows Key is as awesome

Top Pro

Keyboard friendly

Nearly all actions can be driven with keyboard commands. Window management, including effects such as desktop overviews, can be triggered with a keyboard control (or mouse gesture) and some even support filtering results (such as windows shown) by typing. The KRunner tool (default keybinding: Alt+F2 or Alt+Space) provides searching local files, online sources, unit conversions, math and more all from a keyboard driven interface. See More

Top Pro

Active development

Top Pro

Integrated advanced search

Plasma Desktop comes with an integration search system that makes it easy to find local files, emails, contacts, events and more. The file manager supports tagging and rating files as well as full-content searching and the KRunner command window and the Milou desktop widget makes searching for files, emails, applications and other content by name, subject, category, tag, fulltext, etc. very simple. It does this with essentially no noticeable interference with day-to-day usage of the computer, thanks to the scheduling built into the backend system (Baloo). See More

Top Pro

Integrated components

Plasma Desktop generally comes packaged with a full set of applications to get users started, including a file manager (Dolphin), advanced file manager and browser (Konqueror), image and document viewers (Gwenview, Okular), the Calligra office suite, CD and DVD authoring (K3b) and dozens more. The desktop can be installed and used without these applications, but they add significant value for many people. See More

Top Pro

Adheres to standards

Standards adherence allows for interoperability and shared technology for X Window System desktops, with similar Wayland support being worked on. Applications not written with Plasma in mind work very well in Plasma as a result. The development team has also been instrumental in standard creation and adoption such as NETWM, X11 clipboard, icon themes, mimetype handling, application menu standardization, system tray protocols and notifications and more. See More

Top Pro

Multi-Device "Convergence"

Plasma Desktop provides seamless "zero config" integration of your Android device with your laptop and desktop machines via KDE Connect. Phone calls, SMS messages, cross-device copy and paste, media remote control, cursor control and more are supported. The technology that Plasma Desktop is built on, simply called "Plasma", also provides interfaces for phones, tablets, netbooks, and media centers in addition to the desktop. These additional interfaces use the same underlying frameworks and therefore work well together and have a unified feel to them. They also support a common set of applications across them which adapt to the input methods and screen sizes. See More

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score 78 · Answer 2

Gnome

Top Con

No taskbar by default

GNOME doesn't have a taskbar by default, and might be confusing to people migrating from Windows for that reason. It is however possible to install it through http://extensions.gnome.org. See More

Top Pro

Easy to use

GNOME 3 has been designed to make it simple and easy to use. Press a button to view your open windows, launch applications or check if you have new messages. See More

Top Con

Some areas are unpolished and lack features

Some aspects are still unpolished and lack features - the gnome design team works well, but seems to not be taking input from the outside world. See More

Top Pro

Very productive

With a clean layout and well-thought keyboard shortcuts, Gnome 3 is simply the best for people looking to be productive with their computer. See More

Top Con

Extension system is basically unsupported

Backward compatibility is not guaranteed and extensions seems like second class citizens in the GNOME environment. See More

Top Pro

Great for high dpi displays

Adjustable scaling factor makes it great for high resolution laptops and far away TVs. See More

Top Con

It tries to reinvent the wheel

It isn't a traditional interface. Very different to adjust to. See More

Top Pro

Does not get in the way

GNOME 3 lets you do the things you want without getting in the way. It won't bother you or badger you with demands, and it has been designed to help you comfortably deal with notifications. See More

Top Pro

Adheres to standards

Allowing for interoperability and shared technology for X Window System desktops. See More

Top Pro

Online account management

GNOME 3 integrates with your online accounts, so that all your data can be accessed from the same place. See More

Top Pro

Powerful search

A powerful search feature lets you access all your work from one place. See More

Top Pro

Customizable with easy-to-install extensions

With the right plugin enabled in your browser (comes with Firefox by default) you can browse and install with two clicks the many Shell Extensions available from http://extensions.gnome.org. These are listed automatically based upon the version of Gnome Shell you currently have installed. See More

Top Pro

Touchscreen friendly

It works well with any touchscreen-enabled system, including newer laptops, even to the point of including a well-designed on-screen keyboard. See More

Top Pro

Keyboard friendly

It's (mostly) usable without touching a mouse, so you can keep your hands on the keyboard. Shortcuts can be defined in the gnome setting. There are even more shortcuts available when using the gesetting or dconf tool, e.g. switch to desktop 5 to 9. See More

Top Pro

Easy theming

Changing the look (and feel) of Gnome Shell is easy, shell theme, icon, windows and graphical elements (gtk). individually for each user. Mostly its installing some packages or unpacking some archive to a themes folder and using selecting the new theme in e.g. gnome-tweak-tool. There a lot of really good theme on deviantart. See More

Top Pro

Fallback mode offers a classic look

For people looking for older, more classic looks, Fallback mode offers just that. Ubuntu users can have this option by installing a package called "GNOME-Session-Fallback." In the future to be released GNOME 3.8, the Fallback Mode will not be included, so this is really not a long-term solution. See More

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